


Three Cooks Make Light Work

by HenryMercury



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Aprons, Did I Mention Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Dressing gowns, Established Relationship, F/F, Female Dudley Dursley, Female Greg Goyle, Female Neville Longbottom, Femslash, Fluff, Food, Multi, Polyamory, Trans Female Character, Vaginal Fingering, idk TAGS, magical bonding, trans greg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 07:23:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13185165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury
Summary: Well and truly back at my niche BS





	Three Cooks Make Light Work

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Staganddragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Staganddragon/gifts), [Snortinglaughter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snortinglaughter/gifts), [gracie137](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracie137/gifts), [gwendolen_lotte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendolen_lotte/gifts), [PukingPastilles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PukingPastilles/gifts).



> Well and truly back at my niche BS

**_Dudley_ **

Nev gets home about the same time Dudley wakes up, and Greg drags herself out of bed specially to join them for six a.m. breakfast. Dudley puts on the apron her girlfriends got her last Christmas: _Kiss The Cook_ indeed. It's rosy pink, embroidered with little green vines and white daisies, but Dudley doesn't feel the need to reject it the way she'd have done if her mother had been the one to give it to her. Greg and Nev understand who she is. They're not trying to make her into something she isn't with feminine accessories and housekeeping equipment. They just know she likes cooking, and, despite her mother's influence, flowers.

Dudley lets the bacon fry long enough for it to get nice and crispy. As it sputters and darkens, she feeds water through two cups' worth of coffee grinds for herself and Greg, and puts some lavender pu'er on in Nev's miniature glass teapot.  

"How are the mandrakes?" Dudley hears Greg ask Nev, over where they're both perched on the stools with the broad, cushioned seats they found online a few months ago, leaning forward on the far side of the cool granite benchtop.

"Bloody nightmares," Nev answers, but the affection she has for the crop of unruly plants is obvious. Dudley doesn't know how she does it; from what her girlfriends have described, bringing up a greenhouseful of mandrake seedlings sounds like raising a horde of seriously headache-inducing babies. Dudley is not at all ready for children—though it warms some dormant part of her to know that Nev would be as good and warm and patient with them as she is with the so-called adults in her life.

Dudley strains the tea out into a pretty ceramic jug and places it in front of Nev, along with one of the mismatched, tiny teacups they brought back from China. They'd gone so Nev could give a guest lecture at one of the universities, but had ended up staying longer after Greg mentioned some of her mother's family lived there. She'd worried they wouldn't like her, wouldn't understand her and wouldn't want to make the effort to—but for the most part they had, and Dudley still remembers their hospitality very fondly. Greg doesn't speak to her family in Britain anymore, so it made Dudley and Nev really happy; loving families made up of good people have turned out to be rarer things than Dudley grew up believing. 

"Love you," Nev says with a wide yawn, curling her fingers expertly around the little cup and knocking a mouthful back despite the heat of the liquid. She is remarkably tough for a woman so soft and rounded she seems boneless sometimes. It took both Dud and Greg quite some time to get used to it—used to the way Nev will leave the house in a sundress, straw hat and cardigan, and return with brown knees, smears of soil on her faintly freckled face, warm blonde hair wet down with sweat against the back of a sunburnt neck. How she'll pick splinters out of her hands with tweezers rather than magic, and bandage grazes and heal split nail-ends all with a demure little smile on her face. Dudley knows what Nev did during that battle Harry and all his friends fought in; she's heard about it from everyone except the woman herself. Dudley knows that while Nev is smooth and cheerful and unassuming, it's not for lack of the ability to be anything else.

"Love you too," Dudley replies, as she pours frothed milk into Greg's and her coffees, giving the chocolate shaker a decisive whack to dust dark speckles over the drinks' surfaces.

Dudley scoops the bacon rashers out of the pan and piles them onto a plate in front of the other two. Toast springs up a few seconds later with a metallic _boing_.

"Sit down," Greg implores, already munching on a bit of bacon. Her large, white fluffy dressing gown is fastened securely around her square shoulders, and Dudley knows exactly how soft that material is. She wants to fist her hands in the gown's floppy lapels and drag its occupant in for a quick snog—but the timer she set for the soft-boiled eggs is about to go, and there's another round of toast to do before the bacon and the eggs get cold.

Dudley swigs her coffee, relishing in the prickle of the caffeine through her veins. She conceals the full strength of her sigh of pleasure; Greg is very firm about addiction, and she'll cut Dudley's morning coffees down to two, even one, if Dudley lets slip that she still feels those first mouthfuls crawling through her like she's injected some hard-craved narcotic. Dudley hasn't told Greg about the energy drinks she and her labourers regularly pick to have with lunch at work. She's trying to cut down, to quit before she has to have that particular conversation.

"I'll sit in a sec."

"Seriously, I can do the rest," says Greg.

Dudley shakes her head, though. It isn't that Greg's cooking is substandard in any way—Greg's cooking is fucking excellent. People from far and wide pay loads of money for the pleasure of Greg's cooking, and that's just the point. Greg will be in the kitchen all afternoon and evening at the restaurant. Dudley likes to give her the mornings off at home.

It isn't long before Nev's grabbing Dudley's hand, tapping her wrist gently just above her watch. Dudley reads the time and realises she's got all of six minutes before she has to be leaving. She's still not very good at managing her time at home—she sometimes wishes her parents had enforced curfews and things a bit more strictly when she was growing up, but she knows that at this point in her life that's just an excuse. Nev helps her out, setting periodic _tempus_ charms and passing on various other useful techniques she's collected in a lifetime of what she describes as 'running a bit behind'.

The apron goes over a hook Greg attached to one of the high cupboards with a solid sticking charm, and Dudley's left with her olive green shorts and the matching shirt with _Dursley's Landscaping_ embroidered neatly in a brighter, new-growth sort of shade.

"Sleep well," she says, laying a kiss on Nev, whose mouth is lavendery and warm and soft, and could have Dudley asleep at the wheel if she lets herself indulge in it too long.

"Have a good day," she whispers to Greg, and brushes her lips over her cheek. There's the hint of a rasp there—Greg's still only recently managed to get on the regular potions and spells that keep her looking the way it makes her happiest to look—but it's nothing on the five o'clock shadow she got every day when they first met. Dudley hadn't minded it then, if she was honest. She still only minds as much as Greg does: it's not about the actual stubble but the way Greg looks at herself when she sees it in the mirror. Dudley runs a hand through the thick dark fringe that falls just to Greg's eyebrows and kisses her other cheek. Greg doesn't like to be kissed on the mouth before she's put away her breakfast and cleaned her teeth, which makes sense to Dudley in theory, if not in practice.

She jams her feet into her heavy boots at the door, gives them both a last wave goodbye and heads out to work.

 

**_Nev_ **

"Chicken and leek," Greg murmurs, setting the steaming bowl of soup on the bedside table. Even with her nose blocked Nev catches a whiff of it as she snuffles a breath in.

Greg's weight pulls the edge of the bed down next to Nev's knees, and her large hand strokes lightly down Nev's arm over her sweatshirt.

"Thanks," says Nev, pulling herself slowly upright.

Greg hands her the soup and she inhales the steam for a few moments before picking up the spoon to fish out a piece of chicken breast and some fine slices of leek.

"You can take another Pepperup in fifteen minutes, too," Greg says, very helpfully as Nev's been dipping in and out of shallow sleep throughout the morning and has lost all grip on linear time.

"I look forward to it," Nev says, half kidding and half serious. The potion itself is a bit of a chore to ingest, but the effects will be welcome. She hasn't had a cold this debilitating since seventh year, when they didn't exactly have a great healthcare system happening within Hogwarts.

"There's still no way Duds will let you come to the dinner tonight." The hand Greg had stroked Nev's arm with now squeezes her knee where it pokes up underneath the sheet. "And I'll be staying here with you on her orders."

Nev groans in the back of her sore throat. "Not fair," she says.

"It sucks that she has to go without us," Greg agrees, "but it's also not fair for her to be worrying about you _and_ about her parents at the same time. At least this way she knows she can come home and find us well and happy, no matter what mood Vernon's in. And Harry'll be there too—you know he always draws most of the venom out of Dud's mum and dad before they can start on her life choices."

Much as she hates the thought of not being there when Dudley needs support, Nev knows Greg's right about this. It's what Dud wants, what she'll find easier, and even if it makes Nev feel like a useless girlfriend she's got to do it. She slurps down a few good mouthfuls of the soup. It's really good, not that this is surprising. She doesn't like making Greg cook for her at home, but Nev has destroyed many a cup of _self-cooking_ noodles in her time and being forced to witness that kind of culinary incompetence is much more frustrating for Greg than bringing a bit of work home with her from time to time.

"I'm going to make us some tea, too," Greg declares, leaving Nev to finish the last of the soup. She's been hungry, she realises. She feels noticeably better now that her stomach's been filled with something warm and hearty.

Nev lies back, propped up by a pile of cushions against the headboard. Their bed is large—magically customised by Greg herself to fit the three of them comfortably. Greg is very good at both building and fixing things, Nev's discovered. She doesn't really blame herself for not seeing it at school, though she does wish she had. They were different people then, and nothing like this could ever have worked between them—but on occasion she wonders whether maybe she could have broken through the unhappy, repressed bully Greg's circumstances had made her and dug out the soft girl buried underneath.

Some things just take time, though. Dudley said this to Nev a few years ago now, through a mouthful of fried rice, a shrugging sort of statement that she's probably forgotten she ever uttered by now—but it's stuck with Nev. Some things could only happen at particular times. If none of them had yet questioned who they thought they were—if Nev hadn't yet grown into herself, and if Greg was still playing son to an cruel Death Eater father, and Dudley was still a bully without any constructive passions—then it would _actually_ have been as wrong as people said their arrangement was when it first fell into place. Nev couldn't have loved bullies like that, could only have wanted them out of her life. What she needs the rest of the world to understand now is that people do change. Not always, but sometimes. People grow, just like plants, and some of them go to seed in the harsher seasons of their lives so they can grow back healthier and ready to bloom.

Greg returns with two mugs, and then climbs up onto the bed next to Nev. They drink in companionable silence, tempered only by quiet slurping sounds and breathing.

"Nap with me?" asks Nev, once the empty mugs are resting together on the bedside table.

"Reckon I could nap," Greg agrees, burrowing down under the blankets dressing gown and all. She feels the cold, does Greg. Nev has a theory that maybe it reminds her of Azkaban, not that she'd ever ask.

Nev turns onto her side and curls in under one of Greg's strong arms, wrapping one of her own around Greg's waist. Nev has a little warmth to spare, so she presses in close. With Greg's chest rising and falling steadily beside her, she drifts off.

 

**_Greg_ **

Nev's waist is comprised of two rolls, subtle like hillsides. It's like looking down at the countryside from a broom, Greg thinks sometimes: an aerial map populated by freckles and moles, stretch marks like rivers glistening silver under noon sun. It's here that Greg holds on, gently, reverently, as she kisses her way down Nev's body.

She peels down the Gryffindor-looking red boxer shorts her girlfriend likes to sleep in and relocates one of her hands to the thatch of dark blonde hair over Nev's mons.

Nev hums contentedly, head tipped back against the pillow, eyes shut. She's lovely like this, sleepily relaxed and amazingly, beautifully trusting. Greg goes slowly, because it's Sunday morning and the gap in the curtains leaks warm yellow sunlight, and while Dudley may feel the need to hit the gym before midday this isn't a compulsion they share. It's Greg's day off, and they've nowhere to be until dinner at Draco and Harry's.

"Hey, would you finger me a bit? Nothing fancy," Nev requests, reaching up to run the fingers of one pale hand through Greg's dark hair. Almost all of it has fallen out of the loose bun she slung it up into overnight. It's too straight and slippery for elastics and bobby pins to stay put, and she's hardly going to use uncomfortable hair charms overnight.

Greg runs the pad of her forefinger down to press gently at Nev's clit, then to dip into the moisture beneath, before sliding the fingertip slowly inside. A couple of sharp breaths let her know Nev is enjoying the ministrations as she slips the finger down to the knuckle next, then past it. With her thumb, she rubs small circles into Nev's clit and watches her creamy thighs twitch and tense.

"Good," says Nev. "That's really good."

After a bit she asks for another finger, and Greg obliges, edging it in beside the first with care. She loves the slickness of Nev's body, the way it welcomes her, holds her, warms her. She loves the taste of it when the mood arises, all musky and salty and human.

Nev lets out a beautiful little whine as Greg's knuckles pass into her. Greg pulls her hand back and presses forward again, just in the hope she'll hear the sound once more.

"Fuck," says Nev. "Fuck. Can you go a bit faster?"

Greg draws her fingers out but for the tips and then pushes in more firmly, pumping them with increasing speed, scissoring and curling them with no particular rhythm. She bends down to take Nev's clit in her mouth and teases it with her tongue.

"Merlin, how are you so good at this? Love it, _love you_ ," Nev encourages, not that Greg needs any additional encouragement. That isn't what Nev's vocalisations are about, though; Greg doesn't like to be touched very much in return, and Nev doesn't feel right unless she's allowed to reciprocate in one way or another.

Greg feels Nev coming around her fingers, clenching hard a few times and then fluttering softly as Nev's silent cries give way to panted breaths. Greg withdraws her fingers and brings them to her mouth, looking up at Nev to make sure she's watching before she sucks them in.

"Want pancakes?" Nev asks once she's caught her breath. She's always weirdly energised post-orgasm—the perfect opposite of Dudley. "I'm getting good at the shaker sort."

Greg can feel the morning hunger coming on, so as appealing as bed is she climbs out from under the blankets and shrugs on her dressing gown. It sweeps behind her as she walks out to the kitchen, like some kind of fancy fur coat. Greg would like a long fur coat, but her pay isn't _that_ good, and she's got nowhere to wear it anyway. The dressing gown is perfect for far more of the important occasions, from breakfasts to TV dinners, to waving bye to Dudley on the front porch at unholy and often pre-dawn hours, to reading the _Prophet_ with Nev conked out in her lap.

Greg makes cocoa with marshmallows while Nev fills the pancake bottle with the correct amount of water and spells it to shake itself.

"Eggs, sausages?" Greg suggests, pulling both out of the fridge. "I'm going to have some."

"Sure. Do we have syrup?"

Greg does a quick but thorough search of all possible syrup locations. "No syrup," she declares. "But we've got that lemon butter Molly gave us." She likes Molly Weasley. She's the sort of hearty cook no one in Greg's house ever was while she was growing up. For Molly, cooking is about feeding the people she loves, keeping them healthy and happy and getting to sit down with them over a dozen towering platters on the regular. Greg can't think of anything better.

"Lemon butter will do fine," Nev says. "Also, we should start working on the invitations before Dud comes home. She'll kill us if she hears we still haven't got a shortlist of paper."

Greg groans. The pureblood in her wants things to be tasteful, rich, worthy of an occasion that means very much to her. She knows Nev feels similar.

"Another parcel of envelopes arrived last night," Nev explains, pausing to flip a pancake with the utmost concentration. "Mostly pink, though, so we can probably rule most of them out on Dudley's account."

Greg gets the larger frying pan down from the hanger and sets up next to Nev at the stove. Their elbows brush, and it should be cramped, but they move with familiar coordination.

"You forgot your apron," Greg says, illustrating the statement by gesturing at her own canary yellow apron with the spatula she's holding. There are charmed bubbles floating across the fabric, glimmering rainbow in the kitchen light.

"Knew I forgot something," Nev sighs.

The bacon doesn't need her input for the minute, so Greg turns to pull Nev's apron out of the cupboard. It's pale purple, embroidered like Dudley's except with violets. _Kiss the Cook_ , Greg reads aloud, and does as the apron demands.

 

**_Nev_ **

The names on the invitations didn't match their birth certificates, and they were never going to.

For Dudley, it's her second middle name that counts—a family name Vernon Dursley wanted to give to the son he didn't get. No one has dared call Shirley Camellia Dudley Dursley anything but Dudley since she was eight and, according to the woman herself, smashed the family television in a fit of rage. (The way Harry tells it, casualties included two televisions and an end table.)

Nev's full name is an archaic pureblood menace that sounds like something one might find on the menu at a Polish eatery run by Welsh merfolk. It's a string of syllables she doesn't identify with, and couldn't even pronounce correctly until she was fourteen. The name's first three letters are N, E and V, and this was the only uncomplicated thing about it growing up, so she relied on them rather a lot.

Greg hasn't gone by Gregory since school. She always used to say that she was thinking of a different ending for the name, not wanting to change it entirely, but she's never actually come to a decision. She's comfortable enough just being Greg.

All of this seems very important when they're planning the ceremony.

It's not a marriage—it's something older than that, a bonding done with the magicks of elements and intentions. The forgers of this ritual didn't care how many people it bound, or what their genders were—just that their intentions were true and united. The magic is dangerous if they aren't, but between the three of them there are no doubts.

All thoughts of invitation cards disappear, though, once they're standing around the roaring magical fire on the rocky, secluded little beach. Hermione and Draco, along with an older witch who's performed the ritual before, are adding herbs and bark strips to the fire and saying words that aren't anything like the spells they learned in school. The sounds are harder and more guttural at first, then lilting and almost songlike, then percussive and punctuated by hisses and _whoosh_ ing sorts of noises. It's raining heavily, thought the fire isn't suffering for it. The flames actually seem to be reaching up to catch the droplets as they fall, dissolving them and mixing steam in with the smoke. Lightning fissures the sky and thunder booms, shaking the sandy ground underneath Nev's bare feet. The moon is full, heavy and yellow, appearing through gaps in the fast-sailing clouds.

"It's a perfect night for it," Draco had said excitedly when he arrived at Nev, Greg and Dudley's house with the portkeys. "Just what all the texts describe. You couldn't have asked for better."

Nev's hair is plastered to her head in what she's certain is an unflattering helmet style, and she has to squint against the rain and smoke and salty wind. It's hard to hear over the crashing of waves on the shore of even this relatively sheltered cove. Everything feels wild and raw and it's like Nev can _feel_ magic in every whip and howl and crack of it, the brilliant heat and cutting cold.

She holds Greg's hand, and on Greg's other side Dudley does the same. Icy rivulets run over their enmeshed fingers, but there's a little pocket of heat preserved between their palms.

Hermione, Draco and the other witch—Tana—finish their chant. Draco picks up the shallow cauldron that's been resting to one side, dries the rainwater out of it and places it on a heavy, rectangular stone at the edge of the fire. Nev feels Greg's hand clench a little in hers. Her palm tingles too, knowing what's to come. Hermione pulls out her wand and beckons for the three of them to hold out their left hands.

The spell she uses isn't a cutting spell. Nev watches with only a modicum of queasiness as blood wells up from the creases in her palm, as if they're dry valleys suddenly flooding. It stings, but no more than many of the plants she deals with on a daily basis. When Hermione points to the cauldron, Nev steps forward and tips the blood out onto it. There are no slices in the skin, nothing but her usual scars and calluses on the palm left behind. The blood offering crackles and sparks against the hot pewter.

"That's your magic reacting," Hermione commentates, although she has already explained this part to them. She's just fascinated, and Nev can't blame her; this whole thing is weird and scary and wonderful, a pretty once-in-a-lifetime night. Nev watches with wide eyes too. She's seen blood and she's seen magic, but she hasn't seen the magic actually, _physically_ inhabiting her blood before. It's always seemed more like... like the soul, or something similarly abstract. Like consciousness, unquantifiable.

Greg goes next, and then Dudley. Dudley's blood doesn't erupt like Nev's and Greg's, but it does fizz noticeably.

"Bit of magic in you, too," observes Greg, and Dudley turns a wild look of delight on both her partners, eyes dancing with reflected orange light. It's not enough magic for Dud to be a witch, not enough to harness for any functional spell, but it's there.

"Magic in everything," Dudley echoes Nev's own thought, pointing at the sea and the earth and the sky, the fire, the congregation of their closest friends, the family that matter. She takes a few moments to locate Harry, who's already staring at her.

Exchanging kisses isn't part of the ceremony, but they do it anyway—quick but tender, to wolf whistles and whoops of delight from everyone around them. Luna brings out a strange, stringed instrument and begins to play, Pansy brandishes four bottles of truly _excellent_ firewhiskey—one for each of the newly bonded women and one for herself—and out of nowhere Ginny's grabbing Nev's hands, whirling her into a mad dance down the sand. Harry's kissing a bedraggled but happy Draco down by the water's edge, and Hermione's explaining the ritual in more detail to a bunch of Weasleys as they examine the fire and the special cauldron with interest. Over Ginny's shoulder Nev catches sight of Greg and Dudley apparently taking dancing advice from the Patils, illuminated by a flash of lightning. A low, ecstatically laugh rolls out of Nev's throat in perfect harmony with the thunder that follows.


End file.
